[Cheetahtemplate-discuss] Output filters and making data web-safe

[<ir...@ms...>]

I'm trying to makde database data web safe.  That is, convert
	<  to &lt;
	>  to &gt;
	&  to &amp;

I thought output filtering was the most appropriate place for this, so I
tried to create a filter in Filters.py:

class WebSafe(Filter):
        """Escape HTML entities in $placeholders.
        """
        def filter(self, val, **kw):
                # The superclass converts 'val' to string, may do other
                # stuff.
                val = Filter.filter(self, val, **kw)
                val = cgi.escape(val)
                # Expand with additional transformations here.
                return val


Then in my template:
#filter WebSafe


But when I run cheetah-compile, I get:

 eatDirective
    self.directiveEaters[directiveKey]()
  File
"/local/opt/Python-2.1b1/lib/python2.2/site-packages/Cheetah/Parser.py",
line 1496, in eatFilter
    self._templateObj._currentFilter = \
AttributeError: WebSafe instance has no attribute 'format'

1) What's wrong?
2) Is there a better way to make "lots of data" web safe?  I could drill
   through all the lists and dictionaries and sanitize each value, but
   #filter seems more appropriate.

I have an additional complication in that one field sometimes needs
spaces converted to "&nbsp;", but I'm handling that via:
#set $prettyCountry = $country.replace(' ', '&nbsp;')

-- 
-Mike (Iron) Orr, ir...@ms...  (if mail problems: ms...@ji...)
   http://iron.cx/     English * Esperanto * Russkiy * Deutsch * Espan~ol